Toughen Your Hands for 'Heavy' Lifts?

[quote]Friborg wrote:
I guess you can do as Bruce Lee did, I’ll explain.

Bruce did a lot of punching back in his day, and as you know the skin on the knuckels are fairly thin. So he needed to toughen up his skin as well.
So he got a hold of a bucket of gravel and started punching.

I would recommend you to start grabing rough stones and work those hands all the time and really give them a beating. You could use sand, stones, rough pebbles and anything else you can think of.

But maybe most important of all: You need to let your hands heal!

Get some good cream and give those hand a handbath often. Go check out a healtcare store. And if your embarresed just say it’s for your girlfriend ;)[/quote]

::rolls eyes::

There isnt a weight limit that qualifies you to wear gloves, if your hands hurt just get a pair of gloves, really who cares? People should be there to lift weight not look at gloves

Burt’s Bees Hand Salve - Buy it…use it…love it.

My calluses always ripped on heavy RDL and deadlifts. I keep them smoothed with a pumice stone but it still happens because my hands get a little bit sweaty and the bar starts to move and takes my skin with it. Tried gloves and they made it more difficult to hang onto the bar. Chalk isn’t an option at my gym unfortunately.

The solution has been to take a couple of paper towels that are placed around the gym for wiping equipment off, I put one in each palm, grip the bar and now I no longer rip up my hands. The improvement in grip has been great, I was really surprised the first time I tried this.

Gloves are ok. I don’t wear em, but I don’t care either way. Unless they’re well used and stink real bad.

I’ll toss my vote in for chalk. Hands don’t slip and you can feel the bar. This is the way I personally like it.

Straps are a second choice. Like others have said, use only after your grip has FAILED! Else your grip will lag and you will have to buy your straps a diamond ring.

Funny story: A douche at my gym was doing walking lunges with 20lb dumbells the other day. That’s right. Walking lunges with 20’s. Problem was is that isn’t the worst of the story. He used straps on those 20’s! This is the epitomy of gym doucheness.

cueball

You’ll probably just adjust I used to have huge callouses after ahwile (years) it changed my calouses are barely visible but the flesh is just hard but the hardness is deep not just a callouse over the soft tissue.

Chalk and PUMICE stone is what you need for your situation. I remember my palms would bleed from deadlifting almost every single time but I kept at it and it is no longer a problem as long as I maintain with some pumice stone to grind my calluses away and keep the chalk blocks out for heavy sets.